


Indelible

by stars_inthe_sky



Category: Terminator (Movies), Terminator - All Media Types, Terminator Genisys (2015), Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Backstory, Body Modification, Gen, Post-Apocalypse, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-21 01:46:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6033550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stars_inthe_sky/pseuds/stars_inthe_sky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It’s the enemy’s mark, forced on him, and the Resistance doesn’t have the means to remove it, unless he wants to literally carve it out of his own flesh—something Kyle doesn’t feel quite mad enough to do yet.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Indelible

**Author's Note:**

> [fuckyeahterminatorgenisys](http://fuckyeahterminatorgenisys.tumblr.com/post/139380747122/question-for-the-fic-writers-and-tag-talkers-of) prompted, "What do Kyle’s non-barcode tattoos signify?" with a picture of actor Jai Courtney's actual tattoos, which weren't covered up during the movie. 
> 
> You can see all of the tattoos mentioned (besides the barcode) [here](http://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/a14584/hot-guy-cold-drink-jai-courtney/?zoomable), if you're curious.

A lot of the Resistance guys have tattoos, actually. 

John doesn’t—his face is an identifying mark enough, for both sides. Skynet doesn’t need more clues to know who he is, and no human soldier worth his salt could forget. But the rest of them do.

It’s a way to keep busy during long watches, and a way for even the youngest recruits to prove their toughness, by standing up to the pain and the risk for infection with a still face and without screaming. They’ve mostly mastered the sterilization issue by the time Kyle comes up through the ranks, though numbing agents are still hard to come by. 

It’s also a way to prove their humanity in the basest sense: ink shows up wrong, somehow, on synthetic skin. So if metal’s really working you, trying to infiltrate without violence, it’s a quick tell—and it’s something Skynet hasn’t figured out yet, either, well after the machines have mastered bleeding, birthmarks, and scarification.

Kyle had been slower than most to get inked up. His mom would’ve killed him, probably, even now, and for a while the dim memory of her face and the lilt of her accent were enough to keep his skin clean. Derek had taken the opposite route, covering himself in ink whenever it was offered, but he’d been nearer to adulthood when their parents died, so maybe it had been his way of mourning them.

He’s dead by the time Kyle thinks to ask. A few of the guys suggest tattoos in memoriam, but none of their designs feel quite right. And Kyle’s too close to John, anyway—John, whose skin is nearly as unblemished as the day he was born, whose only markers are scars dug into him by enemies in an endless war fought since before his birth. 

Everything changes after Century, though. Not for John, admittedly, but for Kyle it does. He staggers out of that hell with more than a few scars, but it’s the barcode tattoo that he can’t take his eyes or mind off of. It’s the enemy’s mark, forced on him, and the Resistance doesn’t have the means to remove it, unless he wants to literally carve it out of his own flesh—something Kyle doesn’t feel quite mad enough to do yet.

But he hates that he’d made this choice about his body, to echo his mother’s wishes and John’s choices and his own idiosyncrasies, only to have it taken away. So he follows Derek’s lead, and he starts saying yes every time someone pulls out a needle. Skynet thought they had him for all that time; they don’t anymore.

The rope comes first—it’s supposed to be a Celtic knot, for Mom, but no one can remember what that’s supposed to look like, so it’s the best Barnes can manage. Billy Wisher draws an abstract animal in red on his wrist, to match the image most of the rest of their unit has gotten done somewhere. 

There’s a drunken night after they demolish the whole Century complex when he lets Savannah doodle on his left forearm and wakes up with a hangover, some squiggles, and a stylized human skull that, weirdly, calms his nightmares of similar sights rendered in red-eyed metal. Star adds the Scrabble tile because someone dared him to let her.

None of the new images hide the barcode, but they drown it out. Kyle feels more like himself than he ever did in Century—not like himself from before, but the reclamation helps him settle into whoever he’s become since.

John doesn’t say anything about Kyle’s choices, and Kyle’s not even sure his commander has noticed any of it until a few weeks before Topanga Canyon, when John asks if what he’s thinking of getting next. Kyle hasn’t thought about it—other than the knot, he hadn’t thought about any of the tattoos in advance—but the question gives him pause, and, next thing he knows, John’s steady hands are guiding a needle along his skin, sketching out a home like the one Kyle barely remembers growing up in, like he wants to rebuild someday, like John never had.

The little house has just finished healing by the time Kyle leaps into the past, and then into a new future. After the dust settles on Genisys, he watches his parents from a distance, talks to his younger self, and wonders if the Derek in this timeline has a chest full of ink or nothing at all. 

Before they drive off into the impossibly green hills, he glances down at his wrist, and then back at the house that the younger Kyle had disappeared into. They look remarkably alike.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [here](http://stars-inthe-sky.tumblr.com/post/139389832620/fuckyeahterminatorgenisys-question-for-the-fic) on Tumblr.


End file.
